After teasing its mobile payment service in December and accepting registrations for early access, smartphone manufacturer Samsung has finally made its contactless payment service, Samsung Pay, generally available in India. Unfortunately the service is only compatible with select smartphones from Samsung’s portfolio, namely; Samsung Galaxy S7, S7Edge, Note5, S6 Edge+, A7 and A5 (2016 editions).
How will it work?
Samsung Pay supports both NFC (Near Field Communication) and MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission), which the company claims are both compatible with the current card reading machines and Point of Sales (PoS) devices in the market. MST (Samsung’s patented payment technology) replicates a card swipe by wirelessly transmitting magnetic waves from the supported Samsung device to a standard card reader. Through MST, the company states, the service will work on a majority of Point of Sale terminals in India.
Payment partners
According to the company, Samsung Pay will work with Visa and MasterCard and its partner banks include American Express, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI Card and Standard Chartered Bank.
The service can also be integrated with the government’s Unified Payments Interface. Though the UPI solution is in its beta phase, it is currently powered by Axis Bank and facilitates peer-to-peer (P2P) transfer of funds between bank accounts on a mobile platform instantly.
The company has also made space for mobile wallet service Paytm to be integrated to its service. Consumer can use Paytm to pay by scanning QR codes securely, generating one-time codes for merchant payments and also do peer to peer money transfers.
The company claims the service to be a highly secure platform as it works with three levels of security—fingerprint authentication, card tokenization and Samsung’s defense-grade mobile security platform called Samsung KNOX.
How to use it?
To launch Samsung Pay, a user needs to register and download the application using their Samsung ID. The company has provided the user an option to either register using the fingerprint scanner or through a Samsung Pay Pin for authentication. The user can also skip the fingerprint option and use the pin depending on the convenience and model of the device.
Post registering the app and device, and adding the debit/ credit card details the user can swipe up on the Samsung Galaxy smartphone, select the card, authenticate using a fingerprint or PIN and bring the phone near the Point of Sale terminal and make the payment using either NFC or MST.
HC Hong, President and CEO, Samsung Southwest Asia, said, “Samsung Pay is an example of how we continue to push the boundaries of innovations to make life simpler and better for consumers. I am confident Samsung Pay will redefine digital payments and contribute to Digital India.”
India is not the only country to get this solution, Samsung Pay is also available in South Korea, the US, China, Spain, Singapore, Australia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Russia, Thailand and Malaysia.
“When we launched Samsung Pay, our goal was to enable consumers across the globe to make payments that are simple, secure and accepted almost everywhere. Over the past year and a half, this vision has evolved into building a complete digital wallet solution, allowing customers worldwide to not only make payments but also use membership and transit cards, receive deals and rewards and more,” said Thomas Ko, Vice President and Global GM, Samsung Pay.
The company also announced that Samsung Pay will also be available on the Samsung Gear S3 Smartwatch in the coming months allowing users to pay through their wearable device.